The Third Man: Actor Joseph Cotton (as Holly Martins) on his way back from meeting Orson Welles, near the Vienna Ferris Wheel.

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Saturday, 4/28, was Castro Theatre day for me at the festival.

First up was the Screening of Carol Reed’s The Third Man, dedicated to Bingham Ray, the independent film producer who served as the San Francisco Film Society’s Executive Director for only 10 weeks before passing away while attending Sundance. San Francisco Film Society Board President Pat McBaine spoke about Ray, recounting an intense, enthusiastic, opinionated, and passionate man who invigorated the organization in his short tenure. He cut a path and made waves, but he made a difference. McBaine took a famous line from the film and used it to give some context to Ray’s style:

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

— Harry Lime to Holly Martins, on the Ferris wheel in the Russian sector of Vienna.

This photo, showing the Ferris Wheel at the Prypiat amusement park, was taken by Dondyuk Maxim inside the nuclear-polluted Exclusion Zone, where Land Of Oblivion was filmed. (Courtesy of San Francisco Film Society)

(Aside: One other movie I saw at this fest featured a large Ferris wheel in a one-time Russian — well, Soviet — territory: Land In Oblivion. The Ferris wheel in that film was constructed in Prypiat, the town that serviced Chernobyl, but the April 26, 1986 meltdown happened before it could be officially opened.)

The Third Man was in the top tier of Ray’s favorites list, and seeing it in the venerable San Francisco picture palace, designed by local architectural luminary Timothy Pflueger, will no doubt put it your list, too.

The post-war Vienna cityscape alone is worth the prices of admission. The zither soundtrack played byAnton Karasis a classic. The sewer chase sequence at the end is thrilling, and although Harry Lime cannot plausibly escape in the moral framework of the story, afterward I kept thinking a simple jump into the deeper water would have floated him downstream to the Danube and away. But what do I know of sewer travel? I rarely take Muni.

Pierre Rissient and House By The River

This was followed by the presentation of the Mel Novikoff award to Pierre Rissient. The award is “bestowed upon an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the filmgoing public’s appreciation of world cinema.” Although his is not a household name, Rissient has been one of the most dedicated and passionate champions of quality films and filmmakers for decades and has brought deserving auteurs (Lino Brocka, Jane Campion, Abbas Kiarostami) to the public. He was involved with the development of the French New Wave and he’s traveled the globe to find worthy world cinema. James Toback said if Rissient “Pierre is a deeply religious person and his religion is film.”

Harry Duke, my friend who covers the Festival for the (aptly-named, har!) Worst Show On The Web, asked Pierre if there were any films that receive TOO MUCH attention, movies routinely considered “classics” but which aren’t that deserving. “Do you want me to make people scream?” he warned. Then he said “Vertigo.”

He also mentioned Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni specifically. He said that such offenders (my word) sometimes “use film to pretentiously speak about things which are important” then he cited La Notte, teasing “Oooh, he speaks about loneliness. I thought it was grotesque.” Snap!

Grazie mille a Harry for that question!

The discussion was followed by a screening of Fritz Lang’s Victorian-era noir melodrama House By The River, a decidedly B movie that Lang made for Republic Pictures. Not much to say about this one, but Lang shows off some stylistic touches.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt

Finally, the night ended with a viewing of Francis Ford Coppola‘s latest movie Twixt, a sort of black comedy horror film with two small segments show in 3D. Val Kilmer appears for the second time in the fest (his initial bow was in Harmony Korine’s segment of The Fourth Dimension, where he plays an idiot). Here he plays Hall Baltimore a mystery thriller book author who’s touring small town USA on a card-table calibre book signing tour. When he gets to Swann Valley, the shenanigans begin.

The local sheriff, played by Bruce Dern with trademark crazy eyes and wild hair, has some ghost stories of his own he’s like to share with Hall. Hall ends up having visions (or dreams, or vision of dreams, or…) that introduce him to Edgar Allen Poe and some other spirits. In the visions, he meets a girl called “V” (Elle Fanning) and the relationship they have in this dream world helps Hall process some real life pain, a plot point that is very similar to Coppola’s own life.

It can be spooky, and it has a fantastic look. The 3D sequences were fun (especially the way the audience gets their cue to don the glasses), but the popular opinion is that they didn’t advance the plot at all. Then again, who cares? Sometimes plot is overrated.

There are very bright red blood spurts, a group of sexy outdoorsy goths from Death Guild Central Casting, and some yellow lemons in one sequence that I wouldn’t bother mentioning if not for the cheer they received from some audience members. (Or maybe it was a person they recognized? or a chef’s knife? dunno… ) Inside-joke lemons aside, there were a LOT of people in the audience that were connected to the movie, which made this viewing pretty cool (not that they knew any more of what was going on than anyone else, though.) After the movie, SFFS programmer Rod Armstrong brought actors Bruce Miroglio, Anthony Fusco, and Don Novello onstage to chat. They seemed as entertained as anyone, saying the film’s tone and feeling has gone through many iterations along the way as Coppola has tweaked things.

This is a personal film for Coppola, who no longer needs — or more importantly, wants — to prove anything. The maestro is mostly having fun here, and if you take the viewing experience that way, you won’t be disappointed.